Kevin's Grand Design - C4, 8pm

Happiness.

Happiness. Architecture. Beauty. The three cornerstones of Hab, the ­development company Kevin McCloud set up to create intelligent, green, affordable housing.

He was angry – as a lot of people are – that “new-build” has come to mean identikit, Noddy houses with mean little windows, and he wanted to prove that ordinary houses could come with excellence built in.

This documentary follows his first development in Swindon.

Starting in May 2006, at the height of the property boom, it’s an exhausting process that will take him through two firms of architects and two different sites before he finally receives planning permission and the construction of the 42 homes at The Triangle, as it will be known, ­eventually gets under way.

We’re used to seeing Kevin on Grand Designs, turning up on other people’s projects as some sort of all-seeing font of architectural wisdom.

So it’s a bit of a surprise to see him forced to hand over all control to the building firm’s site foreman.

Even something as basic as ordering the kitchen worktops becomes a battle, and the budgets here are at the opposite end of the scale to the ones he normally talks about.

Here he’s got to buy and install entire kitchens for £900 each. Folk in Grand Designs could spend more than that just on the extractor fan.

So there are lots of compromises to be made – and plenty of mistakes.

But it’s not until next week when the tenants arrive that we’ll find out how well he’s done.